Brexit consequences for advanced learners
We thought the Brexit issue was over and the island would be washed away from our European consciousness, when it occurs to them at tea time (when we think it's 'five to twelve', it's 'right about tea time' in Britain) that a large part of the logistics in neuralgic supply areas were completed by European neighbours.
Instead of getting worked up about the Berlin Marathon taking place at the same time as the four votes in Berlin (Bundestag, House of Representatives, district parliament and expropriation of 3000+housing companies), which has only been planned for two years because it was cancelled last summer, the Great British government has only known for a fortnight that the drivers for food from the European continent are also from the old world and thus need a visa to enter and deliver to the waiting shops. 48 years ago, railway workers there went on strike to fight for the preservation of the stoker profession. This was important at the time because the issue was whether new electric railcars should include a seat for the stoker who shovels the imaginary coals into the very same boiler. Mind you, it was about stoker remaining an apprenticed profession: sitting, opening and closing eyes and talking to the driver if necessary.
The lorry drivers have always had no lobby, so the underpaid jobs were held solely by mainlanders, who were surprisingly eliminated, but were not offered better pay because of the urgent austerity measures. As a quick fix, Boris thought, they could turn a blind eye and offer 300 short-term visas. The last remaining foreign drivers on the island are used to waiting in the lorry queue.
The tricky thing, however, was that besides empty shelves in the supermarket, the beautiful petrol was fermenting in the silos and not getting to the petrol stations.
But the far-sighted government of the island queendom would not be called Tory if it did not have at least two aces up its sleeve: now the soldiers still serving at home with truck driving licences were deployed to calm the population in the kilometre-long queues of cars in front of - or is it behind? - the petrol stations.
'Petrol is not in short supply - don't panic buy'.
This equally diplomatic and half-true slogan is intended to inform the British that there is fuel in the silos but it is not being delivered to the petrol stations
A uniformed man with an armed escort in camouflage suits may deter rowdy drivers with their spare canisters, but not babies in child seats.
Anyone who heard Angela Merkel say in March 2020 that the restrictions will be over in a fortnight knows that this measure is a drop in the ocean.
But the second ace of Johnson & Zombies are the persevering German residents on the island. Someone must have told the Anglo-Saxons that the 'old' German Class 3 driving licence entitles the holder to drive a truck. Unfortunately, it is not known whether the written invitation was accompanied by a financial offer. And a small fly in the self-burned petroleum scandal is the small matter that the good German driving licence does not include the transport of dangerous goods, for which separate training is required. Otherwise, everyone in Germany would drive their own tanker so that they would never have to fill up again.
In fact, a passenger car consumes less fuel during its entire operating life than a standard truck container holds.
The figures on the chaos still seem manageable: 8000 petrol stations in the country (for comparison, in West Germany there were about 46,000 petrol stations in 1970 before the oil crisis, today there are still 14.500, 105 of them with electric charging options, 20% of which are operational, 2 of them on Helgoland), 500 potential new non-military employees in the dream job of tanker truck drivers, which means: in order to restore a nationwide supply promptly by the end of October, anyone with a car driving licence issued in the FRG before 1989 would only have to commute five times a day between the silo and the petrol station to be supplied. It takes 30 minutes to fill the tank in the lorry and the storage tanks at the filling stations, and an average of 1424 km at a maximum speed of 89 km/h in between. No problem in an 83-hour day with a half-hour lunch break. Fortunately, driving time regulations and the minimum wage do not exist in the UK. All those approached will be up in arms about it and have no questions - they all asked them before Brexit.